Some interesting news from this past weekend may bring to light some changes in design direction for the Xbox One though, as new rumors not only counter the previous "down clock" rumors, but also show that Microsoft is listening to developers input while they finalize the hardware specifications.

The Xbox One development team is asking for developer feedback on changes they would want to see hardware wise.

As I have said in the past, these rumors come and go and it's hard to justify reporting on every one. But when I approached a trusted source of mine regarding them... I was surprised by the answer, to say the least.

Essentially, my source has confirmed that the increase in GPU clock speed is 100% true, with the increase happening in direct response to the PlayStation 4. The increase has been a reality since before the reveal, as they have "been reacting to Sony ever since the first leaks of both systems." The news of this bump in clock speed was announced to first parties only, as they "actively spread disinformation to 3rd parties just before reveal to prevent leaks."

This is where things start to stray from the original rumor though. When asked about the increase in RAM (from 8GB to 12GB), the response I obtained was simply "I have heard nothing like that, the development kits have 12GB of RAM, but as far as I know the retail kits are locked in at 8GB."

The source also went on to state that "it wouldn't be much use given the actual speed (of said RAM)." As for current projects, they also are "too far gone for a bump to be beneficial" as many developers have been developing for the currently announced set of Xbox One specifications. He did mention that the possibility may still be there though, as the increase in RAM would help development of games 2014 and beyond when taking second screen gaming into consideration - something many developers have been focusing on.

But what about poaching developers for suggestions regarding the increase? Well, from my sources understanding, Respawn Entertainment may have been the ones lobbying for the RAM bump. This would actually make sense, as Respawn has been very clear and vocal about how the 5GB of RAM allotted for gaming on the Xbox One has already caused issues in development of TitanFall.

Like I said though, these are just rumors, and as the past has proven, rumors come and go while changing on the fly - please take all of these with a grain of salt.

This is very interesting and even though this rumor has spawned from a developer on a forum, I can see it coming reality. The exact same thing happened just before the 360 release. This would line up with all the developers mentioning how the systems are comparable. This would also benefit the PC and PS4 massively when it comes to third-party titles.

I'm sure Microsoft's R&D team have test setups with configurations of 4, 8, 12, 16 GB of RAM. And varying clock speeds as well

And put them through their paces with the alpha software, and then probably broken down to the pros and cons of each setup.

If this is a valid rumor, MS needs to let developers know asap. So they develop with a concrete setup in mind.

Would be interesting if Microsoft does go this route. Would the XB1 stay at $500?

Or would they say screw it and take a loss on the memory increase? Or would price not matter much since the are not using custom processors this time around?

A good question, something I've been pondering myself. However, considering they announced the price, upping it now (even if it is for better specs) will not go down well with consumers. If anything, they'll just take it as a loss and make it up in software sales like they always do.

The price difference from 8-12 in the quantities they are buying , would be barley noticeable. The clock speeds increase, sounds like software changes relating to an increased clock speed. They probably have till around Mid-September to lock it down before they need to go to production.

Faster RAM is much more important than a jump from 8-12GB. If the rumour about the Xbox One OS needing 3GB is true however, that might be the real reason. Only having 5GB available against the rumoured 7GB on the PS4 (PS OS 1GB).

They really need to do more than simply increase the clock speed, as there's no realistic clock speed boost(for a console) that would be able to completely make up the difference on gpu performance. But i guess by the time they found out sony was significantly outpowering them it was already too late to do more than just overclock a little.

They added more RAM to the 360 because EPIC asked for it, if they add more to the XB1 because Respawn asked for it then it wouldn't surprise me there's already a precedent.

As far as speed, it's not going to be a issue as some make it out to be. The new APIs and abilities in DX 11.2 are meant to counter slower RAM speeds and overall hardware, allowing for more flexibility. People should read up on the new Tiled resources option on 11.2 and how it can be used.

Faster RAM is much more important than a jump from 8-12GB. If the rumour about the Xbox One OS needing 3GB is true however, that might be the real reason. Only having 5GB available against the rumoured 7GB on the PS4 (PS OS 1GB).

No version of windows needs 3GB of RAM to run and version in the xbox one is strip down so i fail to see that, even with the 2 OS.

They really need to do more than simply increase the clock speed, as there's no realistic clock speed boost(for a console) that would be able to completely make up the difference on gpu performance. But i guess by the time they found out sony was significantly outpowering them it was already too late to do more than just overclock a little.

They don't need to do jack because YOU nor I actually know what the end products are nor how any of the games will play. What needs to happen is people need to wait and see instead of assuming they know everything.

They really need to do more than simply increase the clock speed, as there's no realistic clock speed boost(for a console) that would be able to completely make up the difference on gpu performance. But i guess by the time they found out sony was significantly outpowering them it was already too late to do more than just overclock a little.

This could of happened ages ago, it actually could of happened before the actual release and MS could of acted on the leaked specs like Sony did. If you read any developer interview, they say the boxes are comparable in terms of raw power which gives this rumor more weight. Even Hideo Kojima has said it, who is the PS developer.

I'm more worried about the PS4's release due to the FPS games are reaching. There's a lot more to it than a TFLOPS number.

No version of windows needs 3GB of RAM to run and version in the xbox one is strip down so i fail to see that, even with the 2 OS.

...and the Xbox OS also shuts down when not in use. The original hypervisor, which shipped on Windows server, was about 1MB in size, so you are correct. But the 3GB is reserved for performance reasons, instead of having to page the HDD as much. Apps reside in that space as well.

It doesn't matter though. Because the Xbox OS no longer deal with low level I/O, it could be significantly shrunk down in size. I can't see the hypervisor being more than 4mb in size. People forget apps also reside in that space. This is done to increase multitasking performance.